Vincent Auriol

Vincent Auriol (27 August 1884-1 January 1966) was President of France from 16 January 1947 to 16 January 1954, succeeding Leon Blum and preceding Rene Coty. Auriol was a member of the socialist SFIO party, and he was the president of the French Fourth Republic.

Biography
Vincent Auriol was born in Revel, France, and he became a lawyer in Toulouse, as weell as a committed socialist journalist. He was elected to the First French Assembly as an SFIO member in 1914, and he served as Finance Minister from 1936 to 1937 and Justice Minister from 1937 to 1938. Auriol was an opponent of Philippe Petain's regime, and he spent two years in prison before joining Charles de Gaulle's Free French government in 1943. After the liberation of France, he became France's representative to the United Nations, and he was the first to serve in the largely ceremonial office of President of the Fourth Republic. There were eight different governments during his seven years as president, and he decided not to run for re-election in 1954 due to the stress caused by the presidency. He resigned from the SFIO in 1958, and he endorsed Francois Mitterrand for the presidency in 1965. He died in a Paris hospital in 1966.